Gosh, that sounds so attractive

Removing and freezing your ovary so you can “use” it later, when you’re “ready” to have children? Apparently.

Women from Hong Kong, California and New York who want to have babies, just not right now, are paying thousands of dollars to have their eggs frozen at Montreal’s McGill Reproductive Centre. In St. Louis, Mo., newly single professionals in their mid-30s have elected to remove and freeze part or an entire ovary, to use when they need it.

It has been five years since the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society sought to combat an infertility crisis by urging women to stop waiting so long to have babies, and five years since the scientific breakthrough that allowed women with cancer to successfully freeze their eggs or ovarian tissue. While one initiative was meant to convince women to begin their baby-making sooner, the other advancement predicted a future where any woman could cheat the ageing process that hampers fertility.

Rather than heeding the advice of starting sooner, women are increasingly turning to technology for what experts call social fertility reasons, even as the debate around preserving fertility continues.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to the women who find out, often too late, that they can’t have the babies they suddenly realize they wanted all along. I can’t imagine how painful that must be. But – and you can call me a Crunchy Con all you like – I have trouble believing that this kind of awfully invasive (and expensive) technology is the answer.

_____________________

Andrea wins the award for most inappropriate response to a news item: Should I be admitting this? I found myself chuckling while reading this. I’m not laughing at infertility, just to be very clear, but rather at this notion that you could fight nature by removing a body part and freezing it the way I do with leftover casserole. It seems not only wrong to me, but slightly funny. By the way, the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society hasn’t exactly been working overtime to fight “the infertility crisis” as they call it–there is close to zero public awareness amongst the women I know that there’s a time limit on having babies. A certain type of feminist friend has won the day: they are out and about stridently asserting that none of this matters, that women have no real longing to be mothers and it’s really all about having that successful career, isn’t it? File folders and clients to see you through your old age, neatly arranged in piles and there when you need ’em. Fan-tas-tic.

_____________________

Véronique adds: Can I grab the award from Andrea’s capable hands for a minute and step on my soapbox? As someone who was blessed by runaway fertility I do not want to diminish the anguish felt by infertile couples. However, I was recently reading an excellent commentary from one of my students in bioethics at St. Paul’s University where she argued for public coverage of fertility treatment for infertile couples, including lesbian couples. I am increasingly irritated, on behalf of infertile couples everywhere, when we include old(er) women and lesbian women in our grab bag of infertility. Diminishing fertility because of age is not a medical condition: it’s the natural course of things (one I’m actually looking forward to, actually). Inexistent fertility because of homosexuality is not a medical condition: it is just the way things are when you don’t have a sperm and an egg. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that older women and homosexual couples shouldn’t want to be parents because that’s what they asked for (although I am not immune from thinking along those lines when I get going). My point is that in a system with limited resources the pie doesn’t get bigger as more people claim a piece of it. By ever extending the definition of infertility to include couples who are fertile but homosexual or used to be fertile but no longer are, we prevent those who are truly infertile from getting access to treatment.

Also, while I’m at it, isn’t it interesting that a treatment that was originally meant for cancer patients made infertile by chemotherapy has been taken over by wealthy women wishing to beat nature? In the mean time, is the treatment available through public health insurance for cancer patients? I didn’t think so. No wonder provinces won’t fully fund infertility treatments.

Comments

Thank you Veronique for putting into words what I have long been thinking:

My heart, also, goes out to those couples who are truly infertile. But when a woman who was every bit as fertile as the girl next door places having children “right now” on a low priority scale, then waits too long and suddenly finds herself having difficulty getting pregnant…well….I take umbrage at the idea that public funds should be allocated to help rectify her situation. Likewise I resent the idea that my tax dollars should be used to pay for reproductive treatments for otherwise healthy and fertile, lesbian couples.
And don’t get me started on how much the entire article that Brigitte referenced made me cringe.

The whole world is messed up when we start thinking of having children as “our right”. No way. We certainly have the right to *want* children. We might even have the right to try to have children (the good old fashioned way). But society is at the point where they are saying that it is our right to *have* a child. Period. And we are involving our government in facilitating this, treating children as commodities and deciding when, how and what kind of kids we’ll have. Since when has it been the government’s responsibility to give anyone who wants one, a child?

And for the record, as long as we’re offering “inappropriate responses” to Brigitte’s original article: If more people were willing to give up their babies for adoption instead of aborting them, and if more people were willing to adopt instead of seeking reproductive fertility treatments….
You do the math. It’s a win-win

Um, yeah. I actually read this article (out of the physical paper) to my husband and friends as we were driving out looking for some surfing waves (to no avail) and it all just seemed so bizarre. I mean really, is adopting such a bad thing? Would I love to pass on my genes to some poor unsuspecting baby someday? Sure, but if for some reason that doesn’t work, we’re better off spending our money going through the adoption process helping out someone who is unable to keep their child. And spending the money on shoes. (And I agree with Cynthia’s final comment as well . . . heck, I have some friends close to my age who have two of their own children and are now starting the process to adopt through an organisation that helps young pregnant women (i.e. teenagers), totally awesome.)

Ladies, there is another problem with this entire scenario. The fact is that as you get older, it not only becomes more difficult to get pregnant, it is also much harder physically to *be* pregnant. Saving your eggs or your ovaries until you are ready to start reproducing does nothing to prevent any medical problems (ie: increased risk of Down’s Syndrome, miscarriage or other serious physical defects) from occurring. And on the other side of birth, it is much harder to keep up with your kids in your 40’s (or 50’s as some women are opting for) than it is in your 20’s.

My children (all of whom are under the age of 10) are already telling my husband and I that we should consider adopting more kids because “there are a lot of babies who need people to love them”…out of the mouths of babes, huh?